Hard Thinking / Soft Thinking

Today I gave a presentation about this topic and people seemed to respond very well to it. The idea is this . . .
Soft Thinking is the creative, macro-level, brainstorming that allows people to work on new ideas and be innovative.
Hard Thinking is the actionable and measurable thinking that gets a project done.

I think that we tend to glorify the one that comes easiest to us. Those people who are creative and big thinkers love to sit around and dream. Those who are practical doers love to get the job done well.

The challenge is that both things are critical. You have to have a dynamic integration of soft thinking and hard thinking to really create innovation. Because a genuinely new idea is no good without follow through and on the other side good follow through on a boring idea gets no traction.

Unfortunately, the leader of a project, department, or organization usually surrounds themselves with people who think like them instead of the opposite. So if a leader is a soft thinker they tend not to bring around them hard thinkers to help them make their ideas come about. Innovation in non-profits will only happen when we are thinking about how we think and pulling the right people together to be effective.